But there was still another factor that assisted in maintaining the balance—the opening of trades and professions to women, which custom had kept so long closed against them, causing parents to hesitate in sending their daughters to learn trades and professions. ‘Better have no daughters at all,’ thought many susceptible ones, ‘if they must toil for their living like men.’ But time works wonders: the day came when a daughter brought as much honour and credit to her family as ever a son could possibly have achieved. What men in the first instance regarded as an invasion of their rights, proved in the end an inestimable blessing. A wife ceased to be a kind of encumbrance upon a struggling man, and became a helpmate in a very substantial sense; for marriage no longer incapacitating a woman from continuing her employment, the income of a couple was doubled: by this means the two were enabled to live in greater comfort and with less strain and worry to the husband. Thus the longevity of the male was increased by the more equal distribution of labour between the sexes, for the wear and tear to the nervous system in the battle of life being reduced, had its share in prolonging masculine life and sustaining an equality of number of the sexes. As every person loved his profession, or trade, ‘being born to it,’ in a most literal sense, his enthusiasm and interest in it never slackened, consequently, no woman deemed it a hardship to follow the calling her parents had designed for her, even when marriage made it no longer a necessity. When the duties of her situation were discharged each day, supposing she filled one, for few women ever thought of throwing up a good post on account of getting married—she would return to her home, whose appointments denoted the presence of the greatest refinement and comfort, and finish the day, for the hours of labour were short, in the society of her husband and children, varied by the enjoyment of social pleasures, or intellectual pursuits. PART II